Essay About Upper Management Partners And Human Relations

Motorola Case Study
Essay title: Motorola Case Study
Problem Identification:
CEO Bob Galvin ended his speech on April 24, 1983 with words that brought much
confusion to Motorola. He stated that he “wanted to decrease the many layers of
management and to bring management closer to the product and market.” This was a
revolutionary idea with great vision. However, the timing of the speech and lack of
proper preparation for the following after effects were ill advised. Bob had not consulted
with his two upper management partners, William Weisz and John Mitchell nor had he
discussed it with Human Relations. The main purpose of Bob wanting to make these
changes were the issues he was constantly hearing about employees stating there was too
many issues with the management matrix and thusly projects were not being seen through
by a single point of contact. Motorola’s rush to stay ahead of the curve as well as the
leader in the marketplace had placed a huge minutia of middle managers into the picture
with most of them managing less than 5 employees. This extremely low employee to
manager ratio was putting anywhere from 9 to 12 people in line from middle to senior
managers. This caused drastic confusion and frustration throughout the company. Bob
knew as the company grew it would only get worse. This was not a situation he wanted to
leave Motorola in before he retired.
Situation Analysis:
Due to the fact that Bob had not consulted with pretty much anyone at the time of his
speech, he had not taken any of the steps that would be necessary for it to be brought to
fruition. He had not created an implementation plan nor lined up any sponsorship. Middle
management certainly would not want to change their current day-to-day business plans.
As well, the changes would mean a loss of power to their power base. The new plan
would have a lot of middle managers cut out of the picture all together. Weisz and
Mitchell would be up to the challenge but being caught off guard did not help the
situation at all. Human Relations VP Joe Miraglia worked with Galvin to set the wheels